Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears

Moscow’s nuclear weapons doctrine, posture, and strategy are at an inflection point. Historically, Russia has leveraged its nuclear arsenal to maintain its great power status, deter nuclear and significant conventional attacks, manage escalation, and threaten nuclear employment in combat in response to existential risks. Since February 2022, Russian political leadership has repeatedly invoked and signaled with nuclear weapons in its efforts to deter the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from directly intervening in the war in Ukraine and to compel a cessation of Western military aid to Kyiv. In tandem with this signaling, Russian experts and military analysts have debated the effectiveness and credibility of Moscow’s nuclear messaging and discussed whether Russia may need to implement measures to restore nuclear signaling credibility.

Previous CNA studies regarding the Russian military’s views on nuclear weapons have sought to articulate the underlying concepts of Moscow’s strategy and planning. The following study takes a different approach by examining the views of three stakeholder communities within Moscow’s interconnected nuclear ecosystem to provide an early examination of what lessons Russian elites are learning from Russia’s nuclear signaling in Ukraine and what possible changes they are advocating for Russia’s nuclear policy and posture.

This study focuses on the views of the following three groups: (1) high-level political officials within the Kremlin who hold the most influence on Russia’s nuclear policy given President Vladimir Putin’s role as the ultimate decision-maker; (2) a small circle of military planners and scholars in Russian Ministry of Defense institutes, referred to as “the military-analytical community,” whose writings are the basis for nuclear planning; and (3) civilian experts who have questionable influence on the Kremlin’s nuclear policy and posture but provide the Kremlin with alternative information. The debates and perspectives vocalized among the three stakeholder communities reflect ideas that policymakers consider behind closed doors, and all three communities can offer nuance and arguments that may help outsiders understand how Russian strategy is continuing to evolve.

The report examines how these stakeholders have discussed the role of nuclear weapons during the war in Ukraine and the implications for Russian nuclear policy and posture. The views of these stakeholders do not represent a coherent body of thought, and we do not attempt to present them as such. Instead, we treat these groups as communities in an ecosystem and seek to offer a range of perspectives before synthesizing some common themes. By understanding these three separate networks of thought, we can provide a more holistic assessment of what lessons Moscow has learned since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For each set of perspectives, we examine the source and its position in its respective community. We then explore what the writing says about the role of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the effectiveness of Russian nuclear threats, potential lessons that Russia should draw from this experience, and how they believe Russian policy and posture should change as a result.